


Wail

by Arnediad



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, M rating more or less tied to overall atmosphere, M/M, Tragedy and Loss, Tried the Marriage Bond angle, Vignette, repost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 08:27:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22493044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arnediad/pseuds/Arnediad
Summary: He didn't understand it...not really.He didn't understand it until he had no other choice.
Relationships: Fingon | Findekáno/Maedhros | Maitimo
Kudos: 28





	Wail

**Author's Note:**

> *Notes regarding repost at end.

It was something females did...or so he once thought.

Those who had lost their loved ones to one thing or another; he supposed that it was cultural...or perhaps even personal. He'd first heard it in Alqualondë...and despite the blood boiling in his veins, he would never forget it. Going up a set of stairs to meet his sire...he'd come across a _nissë_ splayed across what he assumed was her dead husband. The sounds of death and battle were loud around them...scattered fires throwing shapes on pearl-ridden walls ‘till they were akin to phantoms...silhouetting the clash of body against body...the fall of those they had pitted themselves against.

He could not forget the sound coming out of her mouth.

He did not fail to recall it because it was a bloodcurdling...wavering scream that seemed to shake the very foundations of Arda itself. Her eyes were open wide but unseeing...the eyes of what he would later compare to a wight...or some other blind thing...choked with tears, reddened and wild. The floor was soaked in scarlet...the silk of her gown was near-congealed with it...thick and so dark it was nearly black. She was heedless of it...heedless of him...heedless save for the gulping, unbroken, and hoarse howls that were pouring from her lips.

 _Nína_ , he thought, should not make such sounds...they shouldn't. It was such a terrible sound he nearly killed her for it; 'twould be merciful...he supposed, she was clearly in so much pain. That was-ultimately-the first time he understood that what they were doing was wrong...even if it was only for an instant. He had never heard such a sound before...it was a stain on his soul..and he did not want to hear it ever again.

He did not kill her.

It would have been a waste...and in truth, he could not bring himself to come near her. A blackness seemed to emanate from her...from that horrendous noise...a sadness and wrath so virulent it nearly choked him. It took all of his willpower to turn from her...to not let himself drown in the darkness that was so clearly her _fëa_ crashing to pieces...splintering itself next to her love...almost a physical thing. If he reached out...he could almost touch it...or so he supposed. It was also then that he knew that they would suffer consequences for what they were doing. Such actions...such brutality...brutality that garnered responses such as the one he had witnessed would never go ignored by the Valar...and it didn’t...and still they sailed.

He heard it again after _Dagor-nuin-Giliath._

Too much...he heard it then...battle weary...his _Atar_ dead...and he, weaving in his grief...newly a King. He wandered among the dead and wounded and he heard it everywhere...all around. A cacophony of mad...empty grief and the Oath made his bones rattle, made his teeth ache. The sadness of his kin was a melody that was not a melody...a song wordless...meaningless and yet questioning. Thrumming up to the stars...the everlasting stars and it spun him in great...keening circles that seemed to get blacker and wider the longer that he stood and hearkened to it...unable to escape. He stumbled and Kanafinwë grasped his arm with trembling fingers...too tight and yet not tight enough. He asked him to sing and his brother made a choked...helpless noise…

He did not sing.

In later years he sometimes wondered if that was what had driven him to foolishly think he could treat with the Enemy. The monstrous, wrenching loss of his own...of his own and yet not his own thundering about him...burned into his mind; perhaps that is what drove him...he couldn’t rightly say. Only that it was such a dimwitted thing to do that the minute he and his guard were surrounded he very nearly drew his sword on himself. Of course, he couldn’t, not really...but the pale, sickening truth of his folly was before him and desperation was a thick, roiling noir in his veins.

In Angband...it never stopped.

Before they hung him from Thangorodrim, they threw him in the dungeons...and when he was first removed he felt only relief. The despair there was so concentrated it was oligeonous. Somewhere, every hour of every day, someone was grieving; someone was broken and battered beyond any possible hope of repair. The craggy, wildly careening paths to the cells were stained with blood...though kept meticulously clean by thralls. Still...the stench of death and copper lingered...in the vertical bars and the swinging chains...it lingered in the stones…

...Even the stones screamed in Angband.

 _”Don’t you know...Russandol”_ Gorthaur had purred into his ear. _”Don’t you know how well your hair matches the spill of your kin when I slice them open?”_

He had thought that he knew darkness before that...but he had never known a darkness so deep as the despair over and throughout Morgoth’s stronghold. With the death of his sire so near...with the knowledge that he had left his people alone...it was nearly enough to consume him entirely. He did not deserve his crown, he’d decided. He did not deserve to be called a King when so much suffering was brought to them through his name. And the Oath would drive him to drive his subjects to ruin. There was too much _ruin_ everywhere.

Findekáno cried out on the day of his rescue.

Long...so long he had hung there...and so when Fingon came for him...with his bow and his harp...he begged for death. Alone...he was so alone amongst the crags...his friend. A solid, blessedly familiar face and shape and he told himself that if his were the last face he ever saw than he could die well...and die knowing that he had not done more harm. But when Fingon drew his bow, after he called out to Manwë to make his aim true...his face contorted in an expression of grief so terrible that he was certain he should never have asked it of him. A horrible cry forced itself from his lips and somehow...he knew that doing this would destroy him...that it would, at the very least, break him in some way that he would never be the same.

But of course...that never happened.

Thorondor came and he lost not his life but his hand. He abdicated the throne and he told himself that he was a waste. He told himself so...lying abed for too long...brooding for too long until Fingon shouted at him. Gentle, patient Findekáno _shouted_ at him and then he kissed him and his lips were wet with tears and perhaps it was all not for nothing...even if he did not deserve it. Fingon kissed him, and then he kissed him some more until he kissed back and they were wed that night...in starlight...in secret...in treacherous abomination. And every time after that...when the wails became too much he could feel him in his mind...that thrumming...golden link between them that all couples have that are bonded...a thick, warm thread whispering _’tye-meláne’_...

Atop Himring...the wind howled.

Cold...it was cold there. The name was fitting...perhaps too fitting. At night...on many, many sleepless nights he would listen to the moaning gusts that whipped around the fortress walls and think that perhaps it was an echo to what was inside him...inside himself and his brothers. The Oath was hot...burning hot, but as much as it blazed it left the rest of him empty...charred to ash and dim and without any other purpose.

Dull he remained.

Perhaps not in essence...but somewhat in that which was before. No more was Nelyafinwë of Valinor; he was dead...or perhaps buried so deep that he could not see himself any longer. He loved his brothers, but he was separated from them...separated even more with his frantic and terribly secret ‘troth to Findekáno. He longed to go to Dor-lómin...to sink his fingers into dark braids...to seek the soft part of kiss-reddened lips so he could lap at the only sweetness left in his soul with his tongue as a voice crooned in the back of his mind…

_”Maitimo...look Maitimo...look how beautiful you are, oh look at your flame...My heart, my love...how I love you my Maitimo. I love you and love you.’_

_Dagor Aglareb_ was a victory...though a wary one. He remained silent as his love spoke of peace...wearily...hopefully. There was Galrung then...many, many years later; that he could not count a victory due to the loss of life...due to the certainty that their Long Peace could not last...not forever. His brothers were restless and he could not pretend that he was not the same...he could not pretend to have left the Oath behind him atop Thangorodrim...to pretend so would have been folly. Still...he saw more of Findekáno during that long but at the same time terribly brief reprise...and he was not ignorant of his fortune...he was not ungrateful.

For a time...there was no wailing in his ears.

 _Dagor Bragollach_ left him with an aching heart and a King for a husband who was so overcome with the death of his sire he could barely rule. It was...to some degree...his turn to be patient...to be gentle, to whisper love across their bond even as his soul twisted with rage and fire and grief. At his heart...he was still a King...and his people… _their_ people were scattered and burnt and dying.

Dying...and their cries rang to the heavens like thousands of death knells.

They rattled in his brain...reverberated and vibrated until he could barely stand it. Findekáno muttered more to him...not that they hadn’t talked before, but he was wracked with the worry of his Kingship...consumed by responsibility. His Voice in their Bond was as varying as the wild twist of a brook...careening here and there until he managed to hold him still…’till he sang something terrible and made him laugh or cry.

Separated from Fingon...save for their marriage bond...such emptiness left him desperate and craven. Cruelty was etched in his visage...it hardened him...sharpened him like a blade upon a whetstone. There was a yawning sense of distance...of inevitability that gnawed at him like wolves upon a carcass. And like a carcass he was accosted constantly with the impression of decay...of a careening, looming and ominous dread…

And one by one...the living were outnumbered by the dead.

Beren and Lúthien should not have given him the hope that they did.

They had died for it...after all, whatever they had achieved, and maybe he should have taken that as an _omen_ but he did not. It was not so much a victory as it was a desperate, last-minute snatch of success...but he took it as a sign. He did...and _somehow_ he managed to sweep his husband-a _King_ -up in his enthusiasm...and so the Union was formed. It was formed...and they planned...they planned and strategized and they spoke. They saw more of one another then...and the memory of Fingon’s smile...of the gentle lift of his brows...the way he rolled a tactical map out atop a table, his braid falling over one shoulder...the way he arched in the sheets, the softness of him pressed against every line of his hardness was engraved in his mind.

Thus came _Nirnaeth Arnoediad._

He was delayed and betrayed...seething and desperate. For they had not _come this far_ only to fail because he was _late_. Like one possessed he fought to arrive at their agreed position; he drove his men hard...hard enough that they looked upon him with not a little fear and dislike. He did not care... what mattered was getting there... being there. He could sense Findekáno's distress through the Bond...though he could not see exactly what was causing it as without his husband's full focus he wasn't able to. It made him frantic, it made him fierce…

But more than that, it made him _frightened._

Upon his arrival he thought perhaps there was hope. They had men yet...good men willing to fight for a cause...and Fingon’s lot was not so desperate. The sight of him and his host seemed to rouse those involved...seemed to give them encouragement. Love sang across the Bond...even though they didn’t allow themselves to become distracted due to the gravity of the situation. Fingon’s fëa was a warm...generous thing against his...beautiful, bright and so near. Fingon was always warm...always patient enough to calm his temper, to give him pause for thought...to remind him to be a little kind if he couldn’t manage to be very kind. A tether in blue and silver and _’Maitimo, bide for me...just a bit...just a little bit Russ’_ in that clear, laughing voice.

He could never say no to Fingon.

...Fingon could never say no to him either.

When Morgoth unleashed the beasts he had held back until then, hope became less of a priority than survival. His forces were separated from his King’s...and the black...crawling feeling of despair that had haunted him for so long rose up to grab him by the throat. Sword against fur...against fire...against flesh and it was a nightmare in waking hours...a black siege of despair. The sense of urgency within him to get to his Bonded was nearly madness...even as some part of him...one that he strangled and beat down with an iron fist, whispered that it was too late. He did not see Fingon fight Gothmog...but he did see him fall. Caught in a fray of his own...but close enough that he didn’t miss a thing...he saw his beloved caught in the whip of another Balrog...saw him stumble and saw the pitch-dark axe descend.

He felt Fingon die.

More than that...he felt his spirit turn to him...felt it flutter against his own...gentle, apologetic and so, so warm. Stumbling again, gibbering something senseless that he had not the ears to hear, he threw off his attackers and tore his way across the battlefield. The Bond had begun to fray by the time he collapsed next to Findekáno. His generals were screaming for orders but he could only feel the splintering...delicate snap of Fingon’s fëa pulling away from his. It was not so different from the sensation of falling from a great height; the swoop in his belly...the terrible sense of inevitable collapse...only he kept falling...and falling and falling. Fingon said nothing...he could not...his body was already beyond any hope of salvageability...only sheer will was keeping them tethered together; in any other circumstances he’d have admired it.

...And then that was gone too.

So quickly...like a candle going out...so simple...so unlike him. A soft huff and naught. He was shaking; crouched in the thick of battle over a King...and he was shaking until it felt like every part of him would simply fall to pieces. Maybe he said something pathetic...maybe he whimpered _’Káno’_ , over and over again as he fruitlessly tried to use a banner to press against a gaping...already fatal wound. He touched that familiar face...heedless of blood...clutched at swiftly cooling hands; calloused, long and masterful in all things they chose to pursue. His own he buried in dark hair; ripped the braid from its moorings as he bent down and pressed his forehead against a ruined one...sucked in great gulps through his mouth even as his stomach constricted, as he fought not to be sick from the pain of it.

It started in the back of his throat.

Noise...that is...a noise that he had never made before...hardly recognized coming from himself. He knew it from others however, and he knew that it was not the time or the place to do so...but it was a growing thing...ugly and dark and tearing at him like a tempest. Stronger-the only thing stronger, however briefly-than the Oath...stronger than his rage and corruption and despair. And he could only think of that smile...of those eyes...of the way the fire silhouetted him in Himring. It came in gradual, steadily growing heaves and he could only see Valinor...could only see him silhouetted in the light of the Trees as they talked about dreams...free from battle...from fear...from death. Near three-thousand years of knowing one another...and thus was their Fate. He could barely see through the tears...couldn’t hear the battle through the horror-suffused...soulbreaking pall that screamed through his veins. Over his tongue and through his lips ...out of his mouth and his back arched...his back arched with the force of it as he gripped dark strands of hair…and Maedhros…

...Maedhros wailed.

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that I am reposting Wail because it is one fic that I'm actually proud of when it comes to how it panned out. 
> 
> Moar edits; there is an aspect in terms of the mind speech here that was inspired by 'Shining Through' by havisham. Specifically, when Fingon speaks to Maitimo about how beautiful he is. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.  
> Translations (All Quenya):  
> nissë-female elf  
> Nína-Plural, female elves  
> Tye-meláne-I love thee  
> Thanks for reading, and thoughts are always appreciated.  
> Final edit: not sure if it's relevant, but I am kind of grossly fond of Enya, and I was listening to "One By One" and "Falling Embers." on loop throughout the writing process.  
> *I will get to other respective fics recently updated next week. My mood simply didn't allow me to write in those genres this week.


End file.
